Lenin advanced one of the most urgent moral propositions in modern political thought when he argued, in his writings on the right to self-determination, that the majority must defend the unconditional right of the minority to determine its own destiny, even to the point of secession. At the same time, the minority was expected, of its own free will, to seek to remain within the broader political community.
Lenin maintained that those who belong to the majority bear a distinct ethical and political responsibility. They must actively defend the right of the oppressed group to withdraw. In other words, it is not enough for genuine democrats in a powerful nation merely to tolerate dissent. They must accept the possibility of separation and affirm the minority’s sovereign right to shape its own future. Unity loses all legitimacy once the weaker party is denied the option of exit.
Yet Lenin was equally insistent that the oppressed nation carries a different, though complementary, responsibility. Its struggle for liberation, he argued, should prioritise forging the closest possible ties with progressive forces within the dominant nation. Rather than retreating into isolation or indulging in romantic nationalism, it should pursue solidarity through shared institutions and collective political struggle – not out of coercion, but from the conviction that mutual emancipation is stronger than separation.
Lenin returned to this idea repeatedly, emphasising that the call for secession was never a celebration of fragmentation. The aim was to ensure that any union among nations rested on consent rather than compulsion. Large and diverse states could endure and even thrive, but only when founded on genuine equality, voluntary partnership, and sincere internationalist principles. In a striking paradox, the defence of the right to leave was itself the condition for choosing to remain.
Decades ago, I parted ways with Leninist doctrines in a decisive and irreversible break. Yet I admit that I retain a measure of respect for a few of them. His reflections on self-determination have long preoccupied me, and I believe they still carry relevance today. His thinking on the national question continues to resonate in political debates far beyond the world in which he lived.
Stripped of its Marxist framework, the concept may appear deceptively simple. Unity has meaning only when the door of departure exists and remains open. A nation whose cohesion is enforced by tyranny is not a nation at all, but a vast prison. For Lenin, however, self-determination was never a prelude to disintegration. It was the indispensable condition for a genuine union founded on conviction, agreement, and freely given consent.
Lenin’s Question Returns to Syria
This principle resonates today with unsettling clarity in Syria, where the collapse of an authoritarian era has yet to produce a shared political imagination. The Syrian state continues to exist, yet its meaning—geographical, moral, and legal—remains deeply contested. At the centre of this ambiguity stand three minority communities, shaped by history and geography, and speaking in the language of survival, rights, and possibility: the Alawites along the coast, the Druze in Suweida, and the Kurds in the northeast.
Each poses a variation of the same question Lenin raised in 1914: what does belonging mean when the guarantees of citizenship dissolve?
Syria’s transitional authorities face a dilemma often overlooked in post-conflict states. The moral test of any new political order lies not in how it treats the majority, but in how it engages those with the least demographic weight. A constitution, however secular or democratic in form, cannot by itself restore trust. The state must go further—not only by recognising minority rights, but by affirming, without threat or hesitation, their theoretical right to depart. Any failure to do so risks reproducing the habits of despotism under a different banner.
For Syria, this demands a rupture not only with Assad’s regime, but with the political logic that sustained it: a unity defined by obedience, citizenship dispensed as reward, and diversity tolerated only when it serves power. Assad’s system spoke incessantly of “national cohesion” while governing through fear, patronage, and sectarian manipulation. To overturn this legacy requires more than institutional reform. It calls for moral courage that grants citizens genuine political agency.
Three Cases, One Question of Statehood
This tension surfaced starkly in early April, when Issa Ibrahim—constitutional adviser and head of the Civil Action Movement—appeared on Facebook to read a statement attributed to Alawites in Latakia, Tartous, Homs, and western Hama. Sweeping in tone and substance, the document accused the regime and its militias of systematic killings, kidnappings, displacement, economic plunder, torture, medical deprivation, forced allegiance, and exclusion from citizenship rights. It invoked the language of genocide, cited international humanitarian law, and called for a UN-supervised referendum on self-determination, the deployment of peacekeepers, and even the establishment of a secular independent entity.
A similar emotional geography unfolded in Suweida. On August 16, 2025, hundreds of Druze demonstrators gathered in al-Karama Square, chanting “self-determination,” raising the five-coloured star of their sect, and—most strikingly—waving Israeli flags. The march was not merely an act of defiance, but an expression of collective grief. More than 1,600 people had been killed in a single month of violence sweeping the province. From the platform, a woman speaker forcefully rejected both autonomy and federalism, demanding instead “full independence”—a call that was met with thunderous applause.
The demands emerging from Suweida do not stem from ideological separatism, but from political exhaustion. The province feels abandoned: deprived of electricity, water, food, medicine, and security, and trapped between state neglect, militia opportunism, and regional manipulation. Lenin would not have asked whether the Druze possess the right to choose, but whether the Syrian state has fulfilled its obligation to make belonging viable. Self-determination becomes compelling when citizenship has nothing left to offer.
The Kurdish experience has already passed through multiple political stages: denial, endurance, experimentation, and negotiation. For more than a decade, the Kurdish administration in northern and eastern Syria has governed territory and institutions, fought the Islamic State, negotiated with Damascus and Washington, and pursued a political project without formally demanding secession. Kurdish officials insist they seek decentralised democracy, not flags and borders. Washington reinforces this position, repeatedly warning against partition.
Yet history has left the Kurds wary. They know that international guarantees fade quickly. They know that the language of “national unity” can become a prelude to coercive assimilation. And today, having watched the fires of Suweida, many wonder whether the logic of siege and punitive containment may soon shift northward. Lenin’s second injunction—that minorities should struggle to remain within the larger whole—rests on a crucial premise: equality. Without it, expectation turns into compulsion, not cooperation.
A State That Can Be Trusted
These three cases point to a single structural diagnosis: Syria’s political centre remains fragile and mistrusted, unable to convince its peripheries that unity is a source of protection for all rather than a threat to any individual or community. When the state loses this capacity, the language of self-determination ceases to signal disintegration and instead reflects the absence—or collapse—of a shared social contract.
This is precisely the future Lenin feared: a state that defends its borders while forfeiting its legitimacy. Unity imposed through threat inevitably generates movements of separation, and nationalism wielded as an instrument of discipline ultimately becomes an argument for departure.
If Syria is to avoid this trajectory, it must fully embrace the paradox at its core. A credible Syrian state should acknowledge—openly, constitutionally, and without defensive hesitation—that Alawites, Druze, Kurds, and perhaps others as well possess a moral and political right to collective self-determination. That right must be placed beyond negotiation. Only then can the state hope to build a republic in which scarcely anyone feels compelled to exercise it.
This task, however, requires more than decentralisation or power-sharing. It demands an economy that does not punish geography, a judiciary indifferent to sectarian distinction, a security sector stripped of vengeance, and a national narrative capacious enough to accommodate multiple identities without hierarchy. Local governance must be understood not as a prelude to secession, but as an expression of trust.
If these conditions are met, the right to self-determination will no longer function as a separatist illusion. It will instead become the foundation of modern belonging. The freedom to leave is what gives meaning to the choice to stay.
From the coastal towns of Latakia to the besieged villages of Sweida, and onward to the administrative corridors of Qamishli, these debates need not be read as symptoms of Syria’s collapse. They can be understood instead as invitations to rethink Syria itself. The future Syrian state will not be built through the suppression of difference, but through institutions capable of containing it; not preserved by rigid borders, but by rendering them irrelevant to dignity.
Syria does not require a new map. It requires a new moral covenant—one that recognises that the only unity worth preserving is unity freely chosen. A state confident enough to protect its communities’ right to depart may discover, more often than not, that they choose instead to remain and move forward together.
Whether such claims withstand legal scrutiny is ultimately secondary. What matters most is the fear—instinctive, inherited, and historically conditioned—that animates this language. For decades, Assad’s regime conflated itself with the Alawite community, rendering that community politically legible only through his rule. With the regime’s fall, many Alawites now confront an unbearable existential question: what remains? A community with its own political entity, a burdened memory, an open abyss, or merely an accusation?
Here Lenin’s framework offers clarity. The Syrian majority must take these fears seriously, resisting the temptation to dismiss them as manipulation or opportunism. It must defend the right of Alawites, Druze, and Kurds to articulate their demands—even to the point of self-determination—without moral condemnation. At the same time, Lenin would remind the Alawites that collective security is rarely secured through fortress politics. The most durable guarantee lies not in withdrawal, but in a voluntary, negotiated partnership within a broader Syrian polity.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
